Chained to You
by Titty Walker
Summary: Another exploration of the infamous stolen boat incident. Gin, galleons and galoots galore, as Jack attempts to stay alive while remaining within arm's reach of Anamaria's slapping hand.
1. In which the scene is set and sunk

Disclaimer: _Pirates of the Caribbean_ and all of its canonical contents are property M. Mouse. No monies. Mind the _Zorro_ references - Twentieth Century FOX, I believe.  
Notes: Begins roughly a week and a half, two weeks before Jack's entrance in the film. Ta to Pearl for venereal humour, and to Fifi for alliterative aid.   
  
  
Chained to You

**I.**  
  
  
  
It was an awful little boat, really, only three swift paces stem to stern and stern to stem. It could never in good conscience be called a ship, and even she had to concede to that. No, not a ship; more akin to a wealthy child's scaled plaything, the son of a commodore's toy built to encourage emulation of his elders. Jack suspected it might have come with a wooden cannon that she had thrown overboard to stave off any further embarrassment. Strangely, _she_ didn't appear to be embarrassed of the thing in the least, and that was something he couldn't quite wrap his mind around.

It was called the _Jolly Mon_, and despite the title fitting its original purpose, Jack still considered the name to be a sardonic and personally-aimed jab. He was the only mon aboard and the boat contributed nothing to his jollity. It was falsity in advertising, and there should have been a law against it. Granted, he tended to break most laws, but even piracy wasn't without its principles. There was honour amongst thieves to consider: the boat, breaking no law, was therefore law-abiding and on the opposite side of said law than Jack himself; thus, it was his enemy.

. . . all right, perhaps he had ridden that current of thought a bit too far out to sea. But there was no room, no wheel, and nothing else to do.

Grudgingly, he did have a small (ever so miniscule) amount of respect for it, the sort borne not of choice but of a general lack of options. The thing did get them from Point A to Point B without fail, and beggars couldn't be choosers.

Then again, pirates generally weren't meant to ever be beggars. 

Jack's face fell a bit at the humbling truth of the thought.

"Will you stop that infernal pacing!" Anamaria snapped at him from her perch atop the tiny crow's nest. "You'll wear a hole in 'er hull!"

Jack bristled, debating for the hundredth time which was worse: the vessel or its captain. Of course, her foulness towards him was, as it so often tended to be in his associations with the fairer sex, his own cursed fault. But that had been _weeks_ ago and how long could she really expect to blame him for that fire? Not that he was one to talk in regard to holding grudges . . . but there was a difference somewhere, he was sure of it, and he couldn't very well apologise forever for that one incident. 

He'd never get around to apologising for all the others if he did.

"Wouldn't be a problem, love," he riposted, shielding his eyes from the bright midday sky as he smirked up at the female pirate, "if this aggrandised dinghy had a deck t'go along with that hull. ---Ouch!"

"You deserved that," Ana declared, legs swinging, looking for all the world like a cheeky monkey up a tree mocking an incensed boar below.

Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Jack bent to retrieve the grapefruit she'd pelted him with. Woman was weird about fruit. Ate more of it on her own than a whole crew of miscreants. 

"You know," he glowered up at her, "if you're gonna feed me like I'm in the stocks you could at least toss down somethin' I _like_."

A strip of salt beef and a hunk of hardtack rebounded off his forehead.

"Ta."

Ana sniggered and took a deep swig from a bottle of . . . whatever it was she was hoarding up there. Rum. Ale. Wine. He wagered she was already making her merry way into tipsy, which was all well and good - as long as he was skipping right alongside her. Which he wasn't. Which made him grouse inwardly that she was having far too fine a time captaining this . . . this wooden indignity. Her display was almost shameful - she'd been in command of much, much, much much _much_ more impressive ships than this one, he knew that for a fact. That she would step down to this - willingly step down to it! - only made him shake his head in dismay. And people said _he_ was mad. At least he had standards.

_Port Royal,_ Jack assured himself. _Think of Port Royal, with their lovely little navy full of lovely little ships . . ._

None could hold a candle to his long misplaced _Black Pearl_, naturally (although he did have high hopes for one in particular), but he was fairly certain any of them could hold the Great Fire of London compared to this. How Anamaria had come across the hodgepodge thing, let alone why she'd claimed it for her own, was a mystery to him, and his suggestion of commandeering a more suitable means of transportation had been staunchly refused.

"If all you're needin's a ferrying, there's no use wastin' the time," she'd insisted, for he'd met up with her by utter chance on the beach of God-knew-which minor Bahama island, hours from the nearest port worth browsing. Perhaps he should have put up more of a fight, but he'd been drenched and ran through of energy following an unplanned swim to shore after a butting of heads with the captain of the merchant ship he'd bartered passage on from Florida to Jamaica, and in no condition to argue with her.

She was right, anyway. Captain Jack Sparrow wasn't the sort to risk his neck any more than was necessary - despite his neck's predilection for gambling with its own safety, which it would be doing quite enough of stepping foot one on the docks of England's chief policing colony in the Caribbean. One didn't need to commandeer a grand ship in order to go and commandeer another. He'd been a very patient man for ten years; now, he was so close, and there really was no critical reason for any further delay. He had the taste of oysters in his mouth, and what a delicate aphrodisiac that was after a decade of feasting on sand, mirage after mirage of lost opportunity . . .

_No longer,_ he silently asserted, chewing grimly on a bite of meat as he contemplated the horizon. Judging from witnesses' testimonials and word-of-mouth, the _H.M.S. Interceptor_'s reputation was more than a lot of guff. The fastest ship in the Caribbean? No, Jack knew better than that, but the _Interceptor_ had acquired enough respect to make him hopeful that she was _fast enough_, and there was only one way for him to prove her rightly named.

He was scant weeks away, he was certain, from his greatest victory, from the only victory that truly mattered. Soon they would reach Port à Nonet (Anamaria would take him into the lion's den, but she'd be damned if she was going to rest her head in its mouth as he planned to); from there, Jack would make his own way to Port Royal - a brief and likely easy journey - and after that . . . . he had been disappointed many times, too many to be blindly optimistic, yet his skin itched with anticipation. This time, something felt different. This time, he knew, just _knew_ in the pit of his gut---  
  
  
  
A low and unmistakable _boom_ tore the wool from his gathering eyes.

Anamaria shouted something colourful from above, and Jack's jaw slacked. He knew fate's insatiable sense of irony had taken a fancy to him some years back, but normally it allowed his plans at least a head start - just enough of one for moderate confidence to be built, so that when it cut his legs out from under him, the fall was more amusing than pitiable or pointless.

The cannonball struck ten feet from the _Jolly Mon_, sending a tall spray of seawater into the air.

"Bloody pirates!" Ana growled, answering Jack's question before he could ask it. His eyes scanned the sea until he spotted a large, dark form teetering along the waves with, as expected, the Jolly Roger hoisted atop its mainmast and whipping furiously, as if to spur on the wind in the ship's white sails. At least Jack could tell which ship it _wasn't_. Beyond that, at this distance, she could have been anybody's.

Well, not _any_body's . . . but who would be fool enough to waste cannon fire on something as insignificant as the _Jolly Mon_?  
  
  
  
  
Another thunderous crack resonated from the fast approaching galleon as Anamaria leapt down from the crow's nest and took hold of the rudderstock, what food and drink she'd thought to bring along tucked in a canvas sack slung over her shoulder. They had already been travelling three sheets to the wind (or, in the _Jolly Mon_'s case, one sheet), and neither were deluded enough to believe any amount of vigorous rowing would accomplish more than their own exhaustion. 

Their only defences were Ana's cutlass and Jack's pistol. The latter, with its solitary ball and Jack's reluctance to part with it, was practically useless, and unless they were boarded in an orderly fashion no more than two or three enemies at a time, a single blade would be about as effective as a mildly pointy stick. If the cannon fire got lucky before the ship overhauled them, there would be nothing left for them to do but keep a sharp eye and, if it came down to it, swim like hell.

The second round shot nicked the prow in a burst of splinters. Ana swore under her breath, steering the boat hard to starboard, as Jack inspected the damage - which was, in her mind, indirectly but still very much his fault. Jack Sparrow could have been named Jack Ketch for all misfortune nipped at his heels like a starving pup. The Pirates' Code and greed be damned - the next time she found herself in Jack's pocket (_Never again,_ she inwardly avowed) she would repay him the favour in silver and leave him to his own devices.

"She's taking on water," Jack called from the fore.

"Bastards," Ana hissed, her grip on the wheel growing pale. She glanced over her shoulder; the galleon, she noticed, was small for its make, albeit still plenty large, and was now close enough to identify. A flourish of black and bronze paint marked her as the _Festal Brand_ - captained by Diego Vega, Ana knew, assuming his crew hadn't mutinied within the past two years. "Bloody _rat_ bastards!"

"For once, Ana darling, I couldn't agree more," Jack muttered, yanking the rigging's knots tighter - a futile gesture, but instinct and habit demanded he do something cosmetically (if not helpfully) defensive whilst they awaited imminent capture and probable prolonged torturous death.

Later, Anamaria would debate whether it was a fluke or a knock against them that the _Brand_ didn't manage to get off a third shot before catching them up. The _Jolly Mon_ was far too small to engage in broadside battle (or in any battle involving deadlier artillery than, say, puffs of cotton); even Vega, if he were indeed still captain of the _Brand_, wasn't _that_ extravagant. A former Spanish privateer, he had fallen out of favour with his monarchy and amassed notoriety for being one of the Caribbean's most prodigal pirates. His penchant for rapacious indulgence was evident not only in what he took but the manner in which he took it, which was always, at the very least, a show - and more often than not, a grisly one. Diego Vega was the sort of superfluous man one might laugh at, until one realised his ridiculousness to be extremely well balanced with his capacity for brutality.

In short, he was the last captain, barring those belonging to various navies, that either Jack or Anamaria had any care to come across.

Thirty of his men crowded the _Festal Brand_'s starboard side, each with a weapon drawn and pointed at the two swarthy scallywags presently without a prayer between them.

* * *

Jack had the distinct intuition that there was a great deal of tapered metal levelled very near his throat. He would have confirmed this suspicion visually, had he the ability to see anything beyond the searing blue of the sky and the dark rim of his ocular periphery. His head was being held forcibly back for no reason that he could discern, save his own discomfort, and his arms had been wrenched behind his back by what felt like a couple of overzealous pythons. Vega's crew had learned most thoroughly the art of excess.

"Oh, how the mighty have fallen," drawled the smug, heavily accented voice of their captor, whose plumed hat Jack could scarcely see over the juts of his cheekbones. It bobbed slightly as Vega appraised his prisoners. "The notorious Captain Jack Sparrow, master of a dory crewed by a woman. ---Well, almost a woman."

"It's _my_ boat, you mangy cur!" Anamaria snarled, presumably contorted the same as Jack, from the tightness of her tone.

Vega didn't respond, and for a moment Jack's throat grew thick with a rush of trepidation.

"You lying little wench!" he blurted out, his tongue twisting into improvisation. "She's mad - a bloody stowaway. Couldn't resist me. Can't blame 'er."

"Jack . . ." Ana started warningly.

Jack ignored her. "Look at her, would you? Left her brother starkers on the beach an' tried to pass herself off as a cabin boy. The lengths women'll go to, it's enough to turn a man's stomach."

"Jack, I swear to God if they don't kill you _I will_ . . ."

"Shut up, Ana," he singsonged _sotto voce_, then smiled for Vega's benefit. "Refused her advances," he explained.

"_Enough_," Vega commanded. Jack winced as the deckhands' grip on his arms constricted, and his neck was craned further backwards.

"Need I say aloud that I don't believe you," the Spaniard continued, sounding world-weary and somewhat disappointed, "or may we all acknowledge your stupidity with quiet grace? _Honestly_, Sparrow. First you prove as difficult to catch as a sea cow, and now this? I don't even think you deserve the death I had planned for you."

"Say it ain't so, mate," Jack implored, putting on a pained face. As he happened to be _in_ pain, it was one of his better ones. "I'm gutted, truly."

"No, you're not, not yet. But all in good time."

"You're too kind."

"So it has been said," Vega admitted with a sigh.  
  
  
  
  
Anamaria bit back a disgusted scoff and rolled her eyes, straining her gaze towards the member of Vega's crew who had confiscated her cutlass and Jack's pistol. He was a man of some bulk, but he held himself lazily and was within kicking distance. Ana debated her margin for error, and the odds of receiving an accidentally broken neck for her trouble - which in itself wasn't the worst way to go, providing it killed her properly and didn't merely leave her a cripple. That possibility was far more frightening than any sort of death.

She decided against risking it.

Oh, God _damn_ Jack Sparrow (_Captain, God damn Captain Jack Sparrow,_ she could hear his voice correcting her inside her head) and the ill luck that plagued him, that followed him and infected anyone else who did the same. He was like syphilis, in a way.

"Put them in irons," ordered Vega, "around the mizzenmast."

At once, Anamaria felt the sweet ache of relief surge through the muscles of her back and neck as she was released from her awkward position, and blood again found its way into her arms. The heat of it was countered almost immediately by the cold bite of a heavy manacle being locked around her right wrist.

"Give them a taste of the Captain's Daught---"

Vega was interrupted by very familiar sound. Anamaria's eyes widened. She and Jack exchanged startled glances.

"That's int'resting . . ." Jack murmured.

Shouts rose up around them, "Cannon fire!" "It's the Dauntless!" "Sodding Norrington!"

"_All hands_---" bellowed Captain Vega, "---_return fire_!"

In the resultant bustle of activity and confusion, it took both captives less than a second to seize their advantage. Anamaria's elbow shot up to shatter the nearest roustabout's nose; Jack sent a man sprawling to the deck with a single punch.

"Time to go," he announced, and for the second time that day (a disconcertingly high number) they were in complete accord.

Wordlessly, Ana departed the ship the quickest way she knew there to be when one was at sea, and leapt over the larboard side of it.  
  
  
  
  
Jack let out a yelp as he was jerked by his left arm straight after her.

The extremely uncomfortable collision of his stomach with the railing combined with the shock of hitting the water rendered him momentarily without bearings or sense. The soggy sting of ocean up his nose reminded him of his need to breathe, and the persistent tugging of something clamped around his left wrist urged him in the right direction to facilitate that need. He emerged, spluttering and stupefied, and staring into the horrified-looking face of Anamaria.

He lifted his weightier wrist, upon which an iron handlock remained attached.

Drawing it further out of the water, at the end of the chain, the handlock's mate revealed itself with Anamaria's slim brown wrist still encased in its accomodatingly slender loop.

Jack gulped down dread. "That's _very_ int'resting . . ." 


	2. In which discoveries are made

Notes: This chapter be the unofficial and ironic birthday present to Black Tangled Heart, whom I hope doesn't dislike it _too_ much. Happy Eighteenth, Puff.  
  
  
  
**II.**  
  
  
A sudden cacophony of cannon fire returned their thoughts to greater concerns. The _Jolly Mon_ was around the other side of the _Festal Brand_, very probably half-waterlogged by now, and though Vega and his crew were distracted, their captives' escape would not go unnoticed - and the muskets aboard would not go unused.

Jack shook his head, remembering in a burst of panic the item he had been going to retrieve before being bucked over the bulwarks of the ship.

"Not without my effects," he stated, reaching up with his free hand as if to scale back up the _Brand_'s barnacle-encrusted hull.

Anamaria yanked him down just as quickly. "Jack, _no_ - we have to get out of here!"

"Ana, love," Jack ground out through a clenched jaw and strained smile, "you don't understand---"

"I do," she interrupted, fervent. "I understand that my life is worth more t'me than your pistol is, and if we don't get out of here _now_ it stands t'chance ye'll be recovering that one shot o' yours from between your eyes!"

"But---"

But she had already sunk beneath the waves, out of sight and out of earshot. With a quick breath and a last longing glance towards the deck of the _Brand_, Jack had little choice but to follow her.

A feat of coordination, few inhalations and a rare stroke of good fortune delivered them unscathed to relative safety some twenty yards away. For all his time spent at sea, above or within it, Jack had never heard a cannonade from underwater before. The muffled blasts sounded without origin, as if the ocean were attempting to mimic the sky's ability to thunder - or mock it. She could be a taunting mistress, after all; he knew that fact better than most.

He turned around and watched the conflict waging behind them with despairing interest. The _Dauntless_ seemed to be living up to its epithet, its massive girth ploughing a slow and powerful path through the water, towards the _Brand_. One couldn't help but appreciate its magnificence, even if that magnificence was so grand it forced aside the contingencies of less distinguished lives.

"Jack . . ."

Ana's voice barely registered. It wasn't supposed to be like this. It couldn't end this way. It _couldn't end_ this way.

"_Jack_."

A hand on his shoulder, firm but surprisingly mild, steered his attention away from the battle as one of the _Dauntless_' shots hit its mark, punching through the _Festal Brand_'s belly.

"Come on," Anamaria pressed, pointing at a narrow green obscurity in the distant east. Her dark eyes were forbidding. Jack's protests died behind his gnashing teeth.

The two pirates swam on, chased by six pound echoes and the scent of gunpowder on the westerly wind.

* * *

The sun was dipping a toe in the sea by the time they reached the island's shore, both only just clearing the reach of the tide before they allowed themselves to collapse onto the beach, spent, lungs and limbs searing. Ana covered her face with her unchained arm, the other all but dead at her side from the effort of swimming with its iron burden, as she caught her breath. It had quite a lead on her.

Jack shut his eyes, feeling ill from swallowed seawater and dashed hopes. Ten years, and the poetic justice he had composed in his mind had been scored out, the inks made sopping as his hair and rendered illegible within a fraction of a day.

Perhaps he could return . . . . he knew their general location, and he could pinpoint the site of the _Festal Brand_'s demise in relation to the island, once they escaped it. If they escaped it. Of course, then there was the trouble of the dive, unless - Jack's eyebrows lifted slightly at the notion; fine word, 'unless' - the pistol had been spared by bizarre circumstance and was waiting for him atop a piece of driftwood.

Unfortunately, 'unless' was also two letters from 'useless', and Jack wasn't one to befool himself. Not intentionally, at any rate.

He had to accept it: the pistol was lost to Davy Jones' locker, and like everything else that ended up sharing the ocean's bed, it was damned to remain there.

And yet . . . what it had _stood for_ had be---

Jack's eyes flew open and a harsh grunt escaped his lips as something heavy descended upon his already bruised middle.

"What the devil did ye think you were doing back there?!" Anamaria demanded, sitting up abruptly to glare down at him, still somewhat breathless. "_Your_ boat? Your _stowaway_? _Refused my advances_?"

Jack curled over on his side, wheezing. "Didn't think ye'd mind . . ."

"You're a stinking liar, Jack. Always were."

He frowned, offended. "Not _always_."

Anamaria shot him a threatening look.

Jack sighed tiredly and pushed himself up, and drew in his knees. The dull, sick ache in his stomach was subsiding gradually into queasiness, and he had no wish to be slugged into a relapse. "Knowing _of_ Vega isn't the same thing as knowin' 'im, love," he explained, "and you don't know 'im. He's not . . . fond . . . of women, least of all women with minds for . . . well," a shrug, "with minds. With heads t'go along with their oh so useful bodies, and what you're thinkin', that's not what he uses 'em for. The way you talked back to 'im, I'm surprised that lovely shriek-box you call your throat didn't end up slit long before I was blessed---" there was a small stress on the word, and he gestured with his manacled wrist for emphasis, "---with your continued company."

Ana was quiet for a minute as she digested his reasoning.

". . . I don't need to be mollycoddled, Sparrow. I've known men me whole life that would see me hang for breathin', wastin' air on a life unfit for a woman. I'm well aware o' the chances I take and I don't need rescuing from 'em."

Jack smiled, his gold teeth glinting meanly in the dusk light. "He'd've killed us both, Ana. I wasn't tryin' to rescue ye - I jus' didn't wanna be the only one kept alive long enough t'see what lay beyond that mizzenmast flogging."

Ana gave an unfeminine snort, tossing her head in a manner that had always reminded Jack of a haughty horse. "You're a dog, Jack," she spat, then added, balefully, "and don't ever speak o' me brother again."

"Never," he halfheartedly promised, leaning again back into the sand. "On me mother's grave."

"You had a mother?"

Jack's mouth twitched into a counterfeit smirk. "Touché."

After a silent, seething moment, Anamaria fished the bottle of spirits from her sodden knapsack and uncorked it with her teeth before downing a draught. Gin, Jack guessed from the scent of her breath as she exhaled, and he became very suddenly cognisant of his salt-parched mouth and throat.

"Give us a swig," he muttered, the handlocks' lashing chains clinking when he reached for the bottle. She swatted his hand away. Jack contained an exasperated huff. "_Please_?"

"Get your own."

Seconds fell below the horizon as Ana tried to ignore the feeling of Jack's unblinking glower boring into her right temple, but his focus could rival that of the noontide sun's when he willed it to, and she was too sapped to be so pettily stubborn. With a scowl, she thrust the bottle at his chest with an order that he was to ration its contents.

The drink was a warm wet salve on his tongue, not as strong as he preferred, but not worthy of complaint.

"'M sorry about your boat," he offered, and took a second gulp before corking the bottle and handing it back to her.

Anamaria shrugged. "'Tweren't nothing to me."

"No? You seemed to like it."

She shrugged again as she tugged off her boots and emptied them of sand and brine.

"Never a pleasant thing is all," he went on, "for a captain to lose 'is - or her - livelihood, even when it's the runt o' the litter."

When she didn't backhand him for his backhanded sincerity, Jack knew he'd struck a nerve.

". . . leave it, Sparrow," she said coldly, laying her hat over her boots to dry and then reclining next to him on the beach.

He did.

* * *

Several dark hours later, the familiar sensation of a foreign something soft and sweltry licking a path along his jawline drew Jack sensually into consciousness. Humming a low sound of pleasure (for he had learned long ago that whatever name he moaned in drowsy bliss was bound to be the wrong one), he craned his neck to give the owner of the tongue better access . . .

. . . and received a puff of the vilest breath in the western hemisphere in his face in return. Had the state of dentistry in Tortuga suffered so severely in the time between his visits? Not that it had been all sweetness and white before but even at their most impoverished the girls usually managed to come by a swill of some disinfecting liquor or other.

Grimacing, Jack opened his eyes to find himself face-to-face with one of the ugliest mugs he had ever had the mortification of waking up to. Blackbeard's balls, he hadn't drunk _that_ much last night, had he?!

His bed-partner released a shrill squeal, and with a startled shout Jack rolled in the opposite direction, over something lumpy and equally at odds with rude awakenings as himself, if its reflexive cuff to his sternum were anything to go by.

"God - Jack!" Anamaria cried out, jostling Jack's elbow out of her ribs and buckling what stability kept him from foundering atop her in the process.

"Ah, yes," Jack realised, lucidity at last beginning to seep into his brain, "_you're_ the one I'm meant to be sleeping with." He caught himself and quickly amended, "waking with. Not bedding. Can't anyway, technically; no bed."

Ana blinked. "What? Jack, get off me." She shoved him aside and sat up, just in time to catch sight of a wild pig disappear into the spiny brush that lined the shore. "Did ye see that?"

"In greater detail than I ever desired to."

She frowned down at him briefly, but decided against enquiring further. "That pig's gotta drink from somewhere. This island must have a---"

"A tavern?"

She narrowed her eyes. "---a spring."

* * *

That they wouldn't die of hunger or thirst rubbed a little of the tarnish from the silver lining of their survival. Ana really hadn't fancied the thought of having to kill and eat Jack in order to endure, accustomed to tough, stringy meat though she was. Nevertheless, she had decided to remain diplomatically open to the idea in the case of her own insanity. It wasn't murder, she rationalised, if he drove her to it; then it was suicide, and no fault of her own. But she didn't foresee that happening. Not really.

Not much.

Not _soon_, at any rate.

The morning, following certain necessary rituals (if there was one thing piracy had taught them, it was the value of modesty - specifically, that it had none, and luckily, considering their circumstances, they could easily do without such frivolities), had been spent exploring their place of impromptu marooning, skirting the forest border, alternately inspecting its shallower regions and gaging the size of the island. It turned out to be bigger than either had first suspected; they had yet to make a complete circling of it, and hitherto it seemed deserted.

"We'll need weapons soon," Anamaria mulled aloud as they walked towards a sloping crag that jutted out past the beach into the ocean. "Spears for fishing and hunting." She indicated her knapsack, its contents depleted by two plantains and two-thirds of the gin. "This won't last long and I ain't seen a single fruit tree."

"Spears are easy," said Jack, around a mouthful of starchy banana. "A good stick, a sharp rock, and a bit o' something to tie 'em together's all it takes. We've got wood, we've got rock, got somethin' threadbare enough to pass for string . . ." He tugged at the end of the yellow scarf she had knotted round her head and recoiled when she motioned to smack him.

"These blasted things would come in handy," she groused, shaking the arm she had raised and rattling the leash that bound them together. They reached the base of the drop-off and began to climb, Jack slightly ahead of her. "Good as any bludgeon, if only we could get them off. Knew I should've learned to pick locks."

Jack shrugged thoughtfully and tossed the plantain peel over his shoulder. "Could try hitting them with a rock. A heavy rock. Tantamount to hammers, heavy rocks. Same with flower pots. And tuna. Whole, of course; fillets are more for duelling."

Anamaria shook her head, incredulous. "I've always wondered - is it permanent sun poisoning that ye have? Or are you just daft by nature?" She glanced down to get her proper footing as they approached the jagged cliff's side edge.

"You never know, love. It might work on them."

"Tuna against shackles. Oh yes, why didn't I see it before, I feel freer already."

"Not _them_," Jack clarified, grabbing hold of her hand to haul her up the rest of the way. "_Them_."

Ana followed his gaze, which had grown very wide and very covetous.

The rough granitic walls enclosed a small laguna. Within it was docked the _Festal Brand_.

* * *

  
  
  
Footnotes: Thank you, those of you who reviewed the last chapter, specifically . . .  
Savvy-Rum-Drinker: Thanks! I'm writing quickly as I'm able, which mightn't be much over the next two to three weeks due to the pesky distractions of reality, but I'll try to get another chapter finished before all that takes too strong a hold.  
J.L. Dexter: Thank you much. I hope you think this chapter as amusing as the last. :)  
cal: Goodness. Spaced out, your review might be the length of the story. *grin* Not that I mind. I'm flattered you took the time to point out what you enjoyed and your curiosities - I hate to leave loose ends hanging about and find it good to be questioned sometimes, so that I don't forget to explain anything down the line. As for Jack & Ana, I'm not opposed at all to their being paired romantically - just not for this fic. But someday, maybe, after a few more bruises to Jack's person. ;) Thank you.  
Puff: Need I cackle more? Ta, though. Coming from someone as obsessed as you are, that I managed to do Jack even a bit of justice has me happy. And I'll make you like Anamaria yet. >;D  
dime: Ee so glad it brings delight. I'll not keep you waiting long if I can help it. Thank you darling.  
Pearl: Pfft. I don't have to reply to _you_. (Actually, I just feel vaguely stupid doing it, all broken record-y. You know. But ta. <3) 


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